English Political Thrillers

This astute, entertaining literary thriller features Helena Marsh, an art authenticator hot on the trail of an extorted painting in Budapest, skirting the law to return it to its rightful heir. When wealthy octogenarian Geza Marton hires art expert Marsh to buy back his family's Titian painting, she flies to Budapest to close what she expects will be a reasonably simple sale. But nothing is ever simple in this beautiful, flawed city where corruption abounds. Helena discovers that there are multiple bidders for the painting, including some dangerous Slavs.

Michael and Maggie Butler are found naked and dead in a Wisconsin wheat field, murdered by two vicious shotgun blasts. But no one gets murdered in Kickapoo Falls, a peaceful, picturesque vacation retreat on the edge of the Wisconsin Dells, home of the politically powerful Kickapoo Gunn Club. Deputy Pennington is convinced the answer lies back in the wheat field. But the town's ruling elite closes ranks and turns on him as he zeroes in on the truth. What appears to be a husband-wife murder-suicide soon opens doors into a deadly conspiracy set for election night.

In the war-ravaged borderlands of Ukraine, a Russian mercenary unit has gone rogue. Its members, conscripted from the worst prisons and mental asylums across Russia, are the most criminally violent, psychologically dangerous combatants to ever set foot upon the modern battlefield. With all attention focused on the frontlines, they have pushed deeper into the interior to wage a campaign of unspeakable barbarity. As they move from village to village, committing horrific war crimes, they meet little resistance as all able-bodied men are off fighting the war.

Traumatized by his reeducation at the hands of his former best friend, and struggling to assimilate into French culture, the Sympathizer finds Paris both seductive and disturbing. As he falls in with a group of left-wing intellectuals he meets at dinner parties given by his French Vietnamese “aunt”, he finds stimulation for his mind but also customers for his narcotic merchandise. But the new life he is making has perils, whether the self-torture of addiction, the authoritarianism of a state locked in a colonial mindset, or the paradox of how to reunite his two closest friends.

Personable, good looking, and a whiz at physics, graduate student Allan Diffenduffer "Duff" Bogan has a bright future ahead of him. But while staying at the home of an invalid widow in Florida, Duff makes a discovery that freezes his blood: a cache of uranium hidden in the locked closet of a fellow guest. The FBI is initially skeptical, but Duff knows all too well what his findings portend.

When a Swiss intelligence agent goes missing—taking with him thousands of classified documents that have the potential to expose covert agents and information around the world—he also threatens to expose the one secret that will change Jon Reznick’s life forever. Hans Muller has found someone on Swiss CCTV footage—someone who is supposed to be dead, someone from long ago in Reznick’s past. If her true identity is as Muller suspects, and if he divulges her secret, it could be dangerous for her and her loved ones, not to mention disastrous for national security.

Jon Reznick is not a man to cross. A brutally effective black-ops veteran, Reznick has a history of taking the law into his own hands. So when a group of masked men murders his closest friend, he swears to exact vengeance. The now-deceased Bill Eastland had been Reznick’s last living tie to his father, leaving him devastated…and furious. Whether or not the FBI approves, he swears to hunt down whoever issued the hit on his friend.

In City of Meat, Charles Swagger is on the hunt for notorious bank robber Baby Face Nelson when he traces a tip to the Chicago stock yards. While there, he’s brutally assaulted by a madman involved in a nearby narcotics ring. The ring plans to spread its new drug to the residents of the disenfranchised 7th District of Chicago and to make matters worse, this is no ordinary drug—it makes some users happy, drives others insane, and kills many of the rest. Will Charles be able to stop the ring before it’s too late? Or is he in over his head among the dark streets of Chicago?

It's fall 2007. A well-timed leak has revealed that the US government might have engaged in first contact. Cora Sabino is doing everything she can to avoid the whole mess, since the force driving the controversy is her whistleblower father. Even though Cora hasn't spoken to him in years, his celebrity has caught the attention of the press, the internet, the paparazzi, and the government - and with him in hiding, that attention is on her. She neither knows nor cares whether her father's leaks are a hoax and wants nothing to do with him.

In ancient texts, there are stories about men who struck from the shadows, seemingly beyond the reach of death itself. These men were considered part angel, part demon. Their loyalty was to their families, their friends, and their kings. You crossed these men at your peril. And once crossed, there was no crossing back. They were fearless; men of honor who have been known throughout history by different names: Spartan, Viking, Samurai.

A game-changing peace treaty between Israel and the Saudis is nearly done. The secretary of state is headed to the region to seal the deal. And Special Agent Marcus Ryker is leading an advance trip along the Israeli-Lebanon border, ahead of the secretary’s arrival. But then Ryker and his team are ambushed by Hezbollah forces. The last thing the White House can afford is a new war in the Mideast that could derail the treaty and set the region ablaze. U.S. and Israeli forces are mobilizing to find the hostages and get them home, but Ryker knows the clock is ticking.

Lucas Davenport had crossed paths with her before. A rich psychopath, Taryn Grant had run successfully for the US Senate, where Lucas had predicted she'd fit right in. He was also convinced that she'd been responsible for three murders, though he'd never been able to prove it. Once a psychopath had gotten that kind of rush, though, he or she often needed another fix, so he figured he might be seeing her again. He was right.

Camp David, USA. A birthday party turns into a nightmare when a child is snatched after the celebrations. The first lady enlists the services of Sean King and Michelle Maxwell to bring the child home safely. But she and King share a past. Years ago he saved her then-senator husband from political disaster. And this may not be all that passed between them. With Michelle still battling her own demons, the two are pushed to the limit, with forces aligned on all sides against them.

A man wakes to find himself lying on the ground in a railway station. He does not remember how he got there. He has forgotten where he lives. He cannot even remember his own name.

The year is 2026. China has taken over as the world's largest economy, while the United States, mired in an oil shortage, struggles to adjust to its diminished role. Then, a surprise attack throws the US into a chaos unseen since Pearl Harbor. As the enemy takes control, the survival of the nation will depend upon the most unlikely forces: the Navy's antiquated Ghost Fleet and a cadre of homegrown terrorists.

It is a society that is, officially, a paradise. Superior to the decadent West, Stalin's Soviet Union is a haven for its citizens, providing for all of their needs: education, health care, security. In exchange, all that is required is their hard work, and their loyalty and faith to the Soviet State. But now a murderer is on the loose.

In 2035, the southwestern United States is ravaged by drought, reeling from an environmental catastrophe that has left the landscape a chaotic, depleted ruin. California, still viably inhabitable due to its oppressive social controls, marshals state-of-the-art surveillance technology and totalitarian policies to preserve its fragile hold on rapidly dwindling resources and an increasingly unsettled population.

In Geneva, American lawyer Joel Converse meets a man he hasn’t seen in twenty years, a covert operative who dies violently at his feet, whispering words that hand Converse a staggering legacy of death: “The generals . . . they’re back . . . Aquitaine!” Suddenly Converse is running for his life, alone with the world’s most shattering secret.

A classic early Peter May novel situated among the political intrigue of 1979. Expecting to find only a difficult, dreary political investigation in Belgium, Bannerman has barely settled in when tragedy strikes. His host, a fellow journalist, along with a British Cabinet minister, are discovered dead in the minister's elegant Brussels townhouse. It appears that they have shot each other. But the dead journalist's young autistic daughter, Tania, was hidden in a closet during the killings.

The enemy is invisible and moving fast. The body count is rising. And time is running out. Marcus Ryker has spent his entire career studying killers. One thing he knows for sure: a peace summit is the ultimate stage for an assassination. President Andrew Clarke is determined to announce his historic peace plan from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. But when senior American officials who support the plan begin violently dying, Clarke orders Ryker and his team of CIA operatives to hunt down those responsible and bring the killing spree to an end.